I wish to thank the PSOA for the Care Package. What a morale booster! Being in the sixth month of the tour, little reminders from Canada and our Branch are so meaningful. The card with everyone’s signature was especially so – from the good wishes to the spots of spilled wine! I keenly remember missing the mess dinner, and I told my colleagues here how crazy our Branch functions can be. The deployment experience has been amazing thus far – thank you all for thinking of me here in the dusty climes of Kabul!

Here is a photo taken on 22 Mar 13 with myself and the members of the
RCAF who are deployed with the USAF 438 Air Expeditionary Wing. 438 AEW
is the core on which the NATO Air Training Mission – Afghanistan is
built within the NATO Training Mission – Afghanistan.

BGen Tom Putt, DComd 5 US Corps (centre) and his EA, Major Jeff Wilson,
Royal Canadian Artillery, serve at the International Joint Command (IJC)
NATO, which is the war fighting HQ co-located here at Kabul
International Airport – North (KAIA-N). BGen Putt and Maj Wilson are on
exchange with 5 US Corps for a year. Our two organizations are located
within the KAIA-N region, however the 438 AEW HQ itself is located
within the Afghan Air Force Headquarters compound itself. Our locations
are public knowledge and in the public domain so no opsec violation with
this info.

I am serving in an RCAF hard PSel position and one of only two Army
officers within the RCAF contingent. My desk is located within the J7
Training offices. My role is as the Afghan Air Force (AAF) Establishment
Desk officer and I advise the AAF Establishment Officer, Col Eidi
Mohammed on the organization of the AAF. I am leading a 33 day review –
similar to an AMOR process – whereby an entirely reorganized
establishment will be issued for 1 May 2013 based on the 2015 Aircraft
and Aircrew bed down plan. In other words, an Army guy is getting to
advise on reorganizing the entire Afghan Air Force from the ground up. I
assure you this is a pretty neat experience – one of those “once in a
lifetime” moments. The work I did with Branch Transformation certainly
well prepared me for my present job.
The personal photo was taken outside of the 438 AEW unit crest in early
Feb. Just another day heading into the office. The snow makes you feel
at home. This is our standard dress for our walk into our offices
located within the AAF compound and is how I am required to be dressed
when advising for 2-3 hours per day. If you were to turn to my left, the
last photo is the scene I walk towards every day – just beautiful. Our
headquarters is called Fortress OQAB, which is Dari for Eagle. At our
HQ, on 27 April, 2011 we received the worst green on blue incident
whereby 9 USAF personnel were killed by an Afghan Air Force Colonel. I
pass a Memorial Wall every day within my HQ dedicated to these members
who were here before me who are referred to as the NATC-A 9. The insider
threat where I work is very real, hence the Canadian SOP that we advise
in full fighting order at all times.

Canadian service members and coalition forces assigned to NATO Training Mission Afghanistan observed Remembrance Day during a ceremony at Camp Eggers on Nov. 11, 2012. (U.S. Navy photo by MC2 Kleynia McKnight)

At first I was wondering what my tour would be like – since my position was deleted about a week after I arrived. Luckily able to convince people that if you’re building an Army – then there may just possibly be a role for organizational psychology! By now we have re-established the position and I lead several teams working on supporting the Afghan National Army in developing merit based assessment, force management, career path design, occupational review and basically every element of Strategic HR. So far I have programmed almost 1 Billion U.S. dollars in programs and capabilities, which is a great feeling. In my spare time I also get to support gender integration and recruiting so attend women’s Shura’s, see Afghan women special forces, and other odds and ends.

Kabul is beautiful and we have many opportunities to lead movements through the city and practice avoiding accidents and people who apparently cycle with their eyes closed. The working hours are a bit ridiculous but who sleeps anyways?

Food of course is wonderful, or will be once they get ice cream again.

All in all it’s been a great experience and I encourage anyone to deploy. There is always room for people to create their own opportunities, and the technical skills and creative energy we bring as PSO’s has been eagerly embraced by NTM-A and our Afghan colleagues.

We are all healthy over here and as long as we don’t run out of Keurig coffee will be quite comfortable for the rest of our tour. I look forward to seeing you all at the conference in early 2013!

Capt Edith Knight and Maj Dan Tanguay are working for the Afghan National Police (ANP)

The Afghan National Police is a huge organization of about 157 000 policemen/women across the country. Over the last year, in conjunction with NATO Training Mission – Afghanistan (NTM-A), the Ministry of Interior spent a lot of energy to recruit in order to reach this number and ensure a minimum of security to the population. Now that they have reached the target, it’s time to move on to the next phase, which is professionalizing the police force. Within Assistant Command General – Police Transition Group (ACG-PTG), our organization, the mission is to work closely with Training General Command (TGC) and the Operational Pillars (OP) to develop and transition an enduring Training Management System (TMS).

The first step in TMS is training needs analysis and this is where PSOs come into play: determining which tasks, knowledge and skills are critical for the OP and providing relevant findings to the curriculum developers (second step in TMS) to build the right training program that meets the Afghan’s needs. In fact, we are performing job analysis on behalf of TGC; we develop a crucial aspect of the TMS. Our second responsibility is transitioning this important process to the Afghans so they will be capable to do it themselves once we leave Afghanistan. On a regular basis, we meet with Afghan counterparts to train and educate them on what we do and how we do it.

Our biggest project at the moment is the Afghan Blue Border Police. This OP does not have any basic occupational training, other than what is provided sporadically by the International Community. We use multiple strategies to apply best practices in I/O psychology to provide relevant, realistic and applicable findings into the TMS, which will then be transposed into performance objectives. Doing applied research, meeting with Afghan leaders, and collecting data from subject matter experts is a challenging and demanding task. At the end of the day, we do our best to build the best foundation that supports the actions and decisions made by the Afghans, to solve Afghan problems, with Afghan solutions.

“When I first got here last 21 April, I thought I would work on a common research project, with an Afghan accent. What a mistake! I’m experiencing one of the biggest challenges of my career. Not only do I have to conduct applied research on behalf on somebody else who doesn’t have the expertise to do it, but I also have to assist him so he can do it himself. On the top of that, practices that can be applied in a western world cannot necessarily be applied the same way, and nobody is behind you to tell you how to do it, you have to figure it out yourself! We work hard, we make mistakes, we learn day after day, we deal with ambiguity all the time; but at the end of it, what makes us carry on this job is the Afghan leader who tells you how much he appreciates your efforts. The Afghan leader knows that we’re right beside him trying to make his country a better place to live, and to make him a better leader. We’re making a real difference!”

“This is my first deployment and it has been an amazing experience. It started with pre-deployment training in Gagetown, New Brunswick in Nov 2011. The best part of the training was getting to know the people I would deploy with. Though, I enjoyed the live fire exercises in the jungle lanes and on the convoy ranges, the Gagetown convoy training did not reflect the reality of driving in the city streets of Kabul. It did not prepare us to deal with bumper to bumper traffic, mobs of people, or action drills for emergency situations in a densely populated area. Regardless, we received some very good training here in Afghanistan which was much needed and appreciated. Driving on the streets in Kabul is like driving in Montreal with all the traffic, except that added to this mix are men pulling big wooden carts, the odd herd of sheep, donkeys, women in burkas, and men on bicycles. Of course, we are always on the lookout for suspect vehicles and burkas with big shoes under them.

I’ve had several jobs since I arrived in theatre. I started in DCOM P P3 mid Feb as the Deputy Operations Officer. However, a Canadian Colonel I met in Camp Eggers found out, through our conversation, that I had experience with job analysis and he recruited me to work for his organization at Assistant Command General-Police Transition Group (ACG-PTG). After some political negotiations, I found a replacement for my job in Deputy Ops around the end of March and was permitted to work in DCOM P P5 Plans while my replacement got up to speed. While at P5, I was involved in the planning of a high level International Police Conference that included Ambassadors from numerous countries. The aim of the conference was to discuss professionalization of the Afghan National Police and to start preparatory working groups and professionalization plans. The conference was deemed a huge success, as this would be the first time in over 10 years of conflict that the Afghan leadership would meet with the International Community for discussions of this kind.

Once the conference was over and the after action report complete, I moved over to my new job. Now I am working in the Training Needs Analysis section under ACG-PTG, a subordinate organization under DCOM P. We are engaged in some very interesting and extremely important work to help the Afghan National Police professionalize their force by improving their training. It’s exciting to be conducting job analysis in Afghanistan. This experience is like no other I’ve had. We have an incredibly unique opportunity here in Camp Eggers to work alongside of many coalition partners from all over the world. I went into this tour with stereotypes about what it might be like to work with Americans and I wasn’t sure what to expect from the other nationalities. I can tell you that any stereotypes I had were misguided. No matter where people come from, as police and military personnel, we all share a common interest, and that is service to our country and pride in our nation. I’ve gained a great deal of respect for police and I have learned to appreciate the incredible range of tasks and specialized skills performed by civilian and military police forces around the world.”

Hope all is going well with you guys. I’m enjoying it so far. Will be coordinating and redeploying by helicopter with another platoon of government soldiers again today. Lots of rebel militia group activity in my area so very busy supporting the government forces trying to bring stability to the area.

I hope all is well with you and DGMPRA. I am now in Juba, South Sudan (the new capital) and the mission UN HQ. We have completed the admin and training and on Monday I will be flying by helicopter, a one hour ride North, to my team site in ‘Bor’, a village on the White Nile River (Bor means ‘wetlands’). I am the only Cdn assigned to the sector/state of Jonglei, which is thousands of square kms. The main concern in the area is the instability resulting from inter-tribal conflicts as opposed to the threat of invasion from the north (Sudan), which is still happening along the border in some areas. Accordingly, our main goal is to stabilize the area so that the nation building can progress (food aid, medical facilities, police etc). As expected, very hot, dirty and poor. Generally the local population is friendly but for safety reasons we restrict our movement at night to vehicles only. In Juba there is rarely any power so hard to see anything at night anyways. In Bor, there is limited internet access and food so next week will bring new challenges. So far, and despite the frustrations with working in the UN, all is going well.